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November 22, 2024
 

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Hiroaki Sato

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Hiroaki Sato
A Japan Times columnist since 2000, Hiroaki Sato has won prizes for his translation of poetry (PEN American Center, Japan-US Friendship Commission). A paperback edition of his "Legends of the Samurai" has recently appeared. He is now working on a second collection of samurai tales with their origins.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 24, 2008
Burst of U.S. bubble arouses old specters
So the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has spoken: The "usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve's ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction" ("Depression Economics Return," Nov. 14, The New York Times).
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 27, 2008
Democratic pretension vs. airs of entitlement
NEW YORK — "I was honestly dumfounded," Akira Ueda recently wrote, "when I learned that the gold medalist judoka Satoshi Ishii told the Emperor, 'I fought for you, Your Majesty.' " Ishii made that statement when Olympic medalists and others were invited to tea at the Imperial Palace by the Emperor...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 29, 2008
'Good old days' dispensed with body counts
NEW YORK — Driving back from Sunset Beach, North Carolina, where we spend two weeks every summer, we hugged the coastline. After crossing the 40-kilometer Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, we stopped for the first time at the Visitors Center for the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge. The...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 25, 2008
The longest day ever for Japan
I recently stumbled upon a YouTube recording — actually, two — of the Showa Emperor telling his subjects over the radio that Japan was accepting defeat. The first one I heard was what appeared to be a cleaned-up version; the second was the one with static, bits of which I had heard before. This was,...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 28, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court's risible reasoning
Laws are subject to interpretations, courts are official interpreters, and the Supreme Court has the last word. That is a fact of life, though it is also a fact of life that you sometimes wonder if there is anything "supreme" about the Supreme Court. Yes, you know that individual justices come with individual...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 30, 2008
Justices made right call on habeas corpus
Among the commentaries I've read about a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, the one from George F. Will (The Japan Times, June 24) surprised me. The conservative columnist for The Washington Post upbraided Sen. John McCain for condemning Boumediene v. Bush — which upheld the right of habeas corpus...
COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2008
Behind the failure of the Japanese economy
Takafusa Shioya has sent me his book published last year, "Keizai Saisei no Joken" (Conditions for Economic Recovery). Nearly three decades ago, during a period of a few years when Jimmy Carter's presidency morphed into Ronald Reagan's, he was stationed in the New York outpost of a Japanese trade office...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 28, 2008
Bush's brutal war stirs memories of Vietnam
When the news came that Daniel Ellsberg led a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, to help impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, I happened to be looking at the entries for the year 1967 in an almanac.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 13, 2008
Hailing the sensual night crawler
EAST WIND MELTS THE ICE: A Memoir through the Seasons, by Liza Dalby. University of California Press, 2007, 346 pp., $24.95 (cloth) "Earthworms twist" — "Prunella flourishes" — "Load up fertilizers" — "Moss glows green." What are these?
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 31, 2008
Oxymoronic sustenance and sustainability
NEW YORK — Earlier this month there was held, in a midtown hotel, an International Conference on Climate Change. Yet another one? you might ask. But, no, this one was to make the case that Al Gore, with his argument in "An Inconvenient Truth" is a fraud, a swindler. One of the conferees' premises was...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 25, 2008
Is ethnic passing finally becoming passe?
NEW YORK — Just about the time Bliss Broyard's book "One Drop" came out last year, I received the latest book from my prolific friend Inuhiko Yomota, "Japan's Marrano Literature."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 28, 2008
Watching the world's biggest roadshow
NEW YORK — I was recently amused to read the following observation quoted in an intellectual history of modern Japan: "The system in which people vie to get elected head of state through indulgence in garrulity and by flaunting gestures like those of low-class actors is a singularly bizarre custom...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 8, 2008
Bottle of water delivers wrong message
NEW YORK — "You really have to wonder at the utter stupidity and the irresponsibility sometimes of American consumers," Salt Lake City Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson said. "These false needs are provided, and too often we just fall in line with what Madison Avenue comes up with to market these unnecessary...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 26, 2007
Plenty wrong with U.S. agricultural policy
NEW YORK — The U.S. farm bill — a blanket term for all measures related to agriculture, some barely so — appears doomed this year. The House version passed at the end of July, but the Senate version has been stalled in such a way that there's even talk that its enactment may not occur until after...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 29, 2007
Fatal deliverance from an 'iron storm'
NEW YORK — I was thinking once again about the intractability of Japan's part in the Pacific phase of World War II when the news came: Okinawans had staged a huge rally to protest the Japanese government's downplaying in textbooks the military's role in "group suicides" among civilians during the Battle...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 24, 2007
The Self-Defense Forces: living with a lie
NEW YORK — Many commentators have invoked historical analogies for U.S. President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and its still unfolding aftermath, with some saying, correctly, that no exact historical analogies are possible for anything, the least of all this damnable war.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 20, 2007
Why can't Americans give up their guns?
NEW YORK — Is there anything comparable to the numbing obstinacy, the utter blindness to reality, that politicians display toward the consequences of untrammeled gun ownership in this country? So I wondered, once again, when I stumbled upon President George W. Bush's answer to what some now call "the...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 30, 2007
How a woman portrayed Hitler as human
NEW YORK — What kind of courage, or audacity even, is required to stage, in Washington, a play featuring Adolf Hitler — one provocatively titled "My Friend Hitler" and written no less than by Yukio Mishima? After all, not just Hitler, but anything associated with Hitler is condemned here. And Mishima...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 25, 2007
Haiku appreciation at the United Nations
NEW YORK — This month I was judge of the Japanese division of the haiku contest sponsored by the United Nations International School (UNIS). John Stevenson, editor of Frogpond, the magazine of the Haiku Society of America, judged the haiku written in English.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 28, 2007
Rooting out the purplish, yellow perils
NEW YORK — A certain plant of the pea family has been appreciated in Japan — poetically, dietarily and medicinally — since ancient times. So, in the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry, the "Man'yoshu," it is used as an epithet for "without interruption," "for a long time" and so forth,...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

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By Kathryn Wortley

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